In a special address to the city council, the mayor said “I’m sorry” and promised “complete and total reform of the system”.
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Now, as the stories above indicate, as mayor, Emanuel has had his come-to-Jesus moment on his renegade police force far too late to extricate himself from complicity in the crimes of that institution.
“I take responsibility for what happened, because it happened on my watch”. Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, has been charged with first-degree murder.
Among the systemic problems with police, Emanuel aimed particular criticism at the “code of silence” that keeps police officers from reporting misconduct by fellow officers.
Alderman Leslie Hairston, whose ward also encompasses parts of the South Side, including the University of Chicago, backed Emanuel’s comments about people being treated differently due to their skin color.
Van Dyke is accused of shooting McDonald 16 times, but it took a year for the video to be released. Emanuel referred to a “code of silence”.
On Wednesday protesters flooded downtown Chicago and tried to storm two buildings, chanting “Fire Rahm!” in part of a citywide walkout. “It is important that citizens have the right to recall their representatives the elected officials”, said Rev. Gregory Livingston, Coalition for a New Chicago. However honest he might be when it comes to fixing the city’s problems, Chicagoans can understandably now view his next steps through a lens of political opportunism rather than thoughtful leadership.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel says it’s an unacceptable that there are parents in Chicago who feel they must warn their children to be wary of police officers.
But mending relationships takes time, and as the protests on the streets of Emanuel’s beloved city make clear, the time for honest action from Chicago’s mayor might have already passed in the eyes of those who matter. “We’re not going to wait three years”.
Given that 51% of respondents in a poll this week want Emanuel to resign, that’s not much of a threshold. She kept reinforcing to the crowd that this would be a peaceful protest.
Chatman was suspected of carjacking and ran when confronted by police officers.
The mayor had a lot of recent history to work with ahead of Wednesday’s speech – little of it good. Another essay question notes the “number of highly publicized cases involving use of force by officers in Chicago”.
Emanuel had long resisted releasing the dashcam video, citing ongoing federal and state criminal probes, but was forced to after an independent journalist successfully sued the city for the video under the state’s Freedom of Information law.
While an effort to recall Emanuel would have seemed unthinkable after his re-election earlier this year, the effort is serious enough that his office felt compelled to address it for the first time Thursday. The furor grew when the public learned about the other officers’ accounts. Davis said he was sacked in July when he refused to change his report. “Laquan McDonald represented everything that’s wrong: he was a foster child, abused, had no future, then he was killed by the cops”.
A few days later, Emanuel announced that he had demanded and received the resignation of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, created a new task force for police accountability and expanded the use of body cameras. “It is a whole other thing to build friendships and relationships, which are integral to fighting crime”. The city fought its release for months before making it public on November 24. Our city”, “Who’s got to go?
“This is not a racial issue, it’s a democracy issue”, she said Thursday. State Attorney Alavrez called the allegations that she’s involved in a cover up “absurd”.
He says an insider would be the best person for the job.
La Shawn Ford filed a proposal to initiate a recall election, according to Fox Chicago via Chicagoist, that will go forward if just 15 percent of voters agree.
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The house next meets on January 13.
